Category: Advice from other writers

Looking for monsters? My worst enemy is myself. But I rummaged around in my memory and pulled out my old art teacher

Early Morning Writing

A Birkbeck writing tutor recommended Dorothea Brande’s excellent book, Becoming a Writer. I found Dorothea’s exercise of early morning writing incredibly useful. It really freed up my writing ‘muscles’ and allowed me to work more productively.

More recently, the writing guru, Julia Cameron, advocated a similar practice, which she calls morning pages. When I found a copy of Julia’s book The Artist’s Way in my local Oxfam shop, I couldn’t resist buying it. Continue reading “Stamping on the Monsters”

It’s not easy for a writer to make money from the web, partly because of the expectation that everything on the Internet is free. And partly because the web is full of great content and it is very hard to stand out among all the digital noise. But the panelists had some suggestions we might consider…

I am a hopeless gadget-junkie. In 1985, I bought one of the first home computers (a BBC Micro) and taught myself how to program in BASIC. Then along came PCs and, in 1995, access to the Internet via a fragile telephone link into the MSN network. Soon I became tangled in the limitless possibilities of the World Wide Web and taught myself HTML so that I could put together web pages.

I always believed that the web and its hyperlinks would open up a whole new way to create and read fiction, I was just not quite sure how to do it.

What I learnt about writing for teenagers: almost anything goes but you have to consider the impact of your story on adolescents and offer some kernel of hope. And more…

I had never thought of myself as a children’s writer. When I was told my current work-in-progress read like a young adult or even a children’s book, I was dismayed and upset. And then I began to embrace the idea. Didn’t I first develop a love for reading when I was a teenager? And some of the best books ever written were supposedly written for children.

Not only did I enjoy myself immensely at the Conference, but I met loads of interesting people and learnt a tremendous amount. So I decided to do a mini-series of blog posts this week, picking out tidbits and sharing memorable quotes.

I didn’t realise how lucky I was when I managed to get a place on the Writing Conference 2014. The conference was fully booked within a few weeks of being advertised.